


a knot that would not easily be undone

by rainbowagnes



Series: Diviner & Diviner [2]
Category: The Diviners Series - Libba Bray
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amicable Enemies stage, Bickering, Canon Jewish Character, F/M, I love these nerds, Our old friend Unacknowledged Romantic Tension, Pre-Relationship, Sick Fic, Soup, netflix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-21 10:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: "It's literally just eggnog, Sam. Like you buy in a carton and spike with bourbon so you don't murder your family during Christmas.""Wouldn't know. I basically hibernate until New Year's so I don't have to deal with all that goyishe bullshit.""I just want to hibernate until New Year's. Sounds great.""Aww, sugar. I'd miss the sound of your dulcet voice on the radio every morning. It's the only way I can make it though the news without setting something on fire.""How about I set you on fire?"Modern AU. Evie has a terrible case of the flu, Sam takes care of her. Based on a tumblr prompt.





	a knot that would not easily be undone

**Author's Note:**

> based on a tumblr prompt from @darcythedemonslayer: "I don't have any emojis on me but if you did caring for each other when ill (the black horse) for Sam and Evie that would be awesome and I would love you forever!!" 
> 
> Hope this lives up to your expectations! Sorry it took a while to upload. Anyone- prompt me any time! 
> 
> (Side note: I'm not Jewish. If there's anything in the fic that's off/off color/inaccurate in any way, please let me know!)

The worst thing about working in a public radio station was the constant press of other people in her space. This took several disgusting forms, from the male guests who asked for extremely intimate favors, ON AIR, to the coworkers who took her carefully labeled sandwiches, to the constant obnoxious presence of her boss, Mr. Phillips, wanting to know how his employees were "getting on with things."

Look, Evie did everything she was supposed to do. She got the darn shot and drank her orange juice and washed her hands. But all it took was one attendance-mandatory fundraising event for her to by coughing her lungs out with a temp of 103. 

It was a spectacularly horrible day. She'd gone to bed feeling mediocre and woke up with a ringing in her skull like the world's worst brass band. 

The only thing worse was the ringing in her head now. 

It took her a few seconds in her fever-addled haze to realize it was her doorbell going off. 

"I'm not interested in buying anything," she choked out. 

"Lucky for you, I offer my services for free." 

Fuck. If there was one thing that could make her day even worse, it was the presence of Sam Lloyd/Sergei Lubovitch/whatever fake name he was using for his current investigation. She didn't even want to see James or Mabel right now, let alone the bane of her existence. 

(Not really. The actual bane of her existence was everything to do with funding public radio. But still, Sam Lloyd was about as much irritating as it was possible to pack into a single, short-ish, investigative reporter who never knew when to mind his own fucking business.) 

The very thought of standing up, let along WALKING ACROSS A ROOM, made something inside of her die. 

"Fine, but you have to let yourself in." 

There was a grunt on the other side and then the door swung in. 

"You really need to do something about the security on this place." 

"Or else lice like you can let themselves in." She didn't even look up from watching Youtube. 

"Harsh, princess. After I schlepped myself all the way out here to help you out." 

"What makes you think I need your help?," she asked, and then immediately regretted it. 

"Well, for starters you sound like Batman. And you look a little like his longtime enemy the J-" 

She hit him squarely in the chest with a box of tissues. Good to know neither her indignation nor her true aim had been dulled by the flu. 

"And an hour ago you posted this on the group Whatsapp." He pulled his phone from his pocket and began to read from it. 'ltrly duying rn, cn i kill mty box fr gettng w/offive sijk?' Sick fave emoji, sneezing emoji, ect ect." 

"I hate you so much right now." 

She gave him the most withering glare she could, which was a trick, given her nose currently resembled Rudolph's. 

"Duly noted. Anyway, I brought you some stuff." He dropped his messenger bag unceremoniously on her feet and Evie noted he also had a styrofoam take out container. "I texted my mother about one of her home remedies-" 

"If I have to have one more Lubovitch family home cure, ever again, I will murder you. Not even joking. That hangover "cure" your dad suggested had, like, a raw egg AND pickle juice in it." 

"It worked, didn't it?" 

She declined to answer. 

"Look, just buzz off, please?" 

And then, surprisingly, he picked his bag back up and lost the usual joking tone of voice. 

"Do you really want me to? If you do, then I'll just leave this and walk right back out the door." 

And that was the thing that annoyed her the most: she didn't want him to. 

"No, Sam. Please- please stay with me." 

"Course. What are friends for." 

He walked to her mess of a kitchen and immediately began to yank things off shelves. 

"Just so you know, my mother's first suggestion was red onion and honey." 

She made an involuntary gagging noise. 

"I figured that would be your reaction." 

"Doesn't your mother have, like, a Nobel Prize in medicine?" 

"Two, actually." There was a strong element of pride in Sam's voice whenever he tales about his mother, but honestly, Sam's mother was a freaking baddass. And also, like, a very genuinely caring person, which was more than she could say about hers. "But for her quote "paradigm shifting" discoveries about the Ashkenazi genome, not for studying whatever weird-ass viruses mutate in a public radio station." 

He set a steaming mug down in front of her. She sniffed it suspiciously. 

"Gogle-mogle." 

She still kept her eyes narrowed. 

"There's vodka in it." 

Damn it. He knew her too well. 

She downed it in two swallows, surprised at how Not Vile it was. (She can still remember the taste of Itzhak Lubovitch's 1000% Effective Post-Purim Hangover Cure, as Sam so misleadingly advertised it.) 

"It's literally just eggnog, Sam. Like you can buy in a carton and spike with bourbon so you don't kill your immediate family during the Christmas season." 

"Wouldn't know. I basically hibernate until New Year's so I don't have to deal with all that goyishe bullshit. Or carolers. I had a temp job in the Macy's mail room and that was enough candy canes and Jingle Bell schlock for a lifetime." 

"I just want to hibernate till New Year's. Soungs great." 

"Ahh, sugar. I'd miss the sound of your dulcet voice on the radio every morning. It's the only way I can make it though the news without setting someone on fire." 

"How about I set you on fire?" 

"You'd miss me too much." 

He plopped himself down on the couch. "Scooch over. It's cold." 

She grudgingly shifted over and he pulled her multiple layers of fluffy pink blankets over his legs. 

"Ach! Your legs are freezing." 

"You're not exactly a normal temperature yourself." 

But he still wrapped the blankets back around her and ruffled them a bit to warm her back up, trying hard not to notice how neatly they fit together on her couch, or the way her head perched on his shoulder, almost feline. 

He leaned in as well, enough to see what she was watching on her iPad. 

"As much as I recognize that having perfect winged eyeliner is a very important skill, we're in this for the long haul. Maybe something with a bit more narrative?' 

Evie didn't want to move. Her position wrapped around Sam was surprisingly comfortable, and wasn't freezing anymore. More like her own personal space heater. 

"Do it yourself." 

Grumbling, Sam reached for the remote control, easier said than done when you had a feverish blonde limpet wrapped around you. (Sam had had plenty of girls wrapped around him before. And boys. Why did this particular one through him off so much?) 

"We ever finish season 2 of Orphan Black?" 

"Uhhh . . don't think so." 

"Great, because they just finished with season 5. We can catch up." 

She murmured her assent as he settled back down on the couch. This was nice. Evie had dated and brought plenty of boys home before, and she was very well acquainted with the term "Netflix and chill." But the thing was, she didn't really remember anything about most of those boys. They were fun trifles, distractions, forgotten in a week's time as her brain moved on to more important things: Mabel, work, Ling, snap chat, Theta, renewing her Sephora account, avoiding her mom's phone calls, catching up on The Bold Type. 

It was an entirely different thing to be snuggled up on her couch with a boy who knew her and had seen her, objectively, at her worst. (Post Office Holiday Party. Crashed out in the fake potted fern in front of Sarah Snow's cubicle. It doesn't get much worse.) And who (she wasn't going to lie) was ridiculously attractive. Unfairly so, in a compact, wolfish, somewhat way. (And the worst thing is, he knew it.) 

Maybe being friends was about having so much blackmail material about them that nothing you did could ever be embarrassing, ever again. 

"Look, Sam. This is all very nice, but I was really sick this morning. Really. You don't want to come down with what I had." But even as she said it, she felt better. Marginally. Maybe it was just the virus moving on to a new host.

"Aww, doll, don't mind me. I don't get sick." 

She rolled her eyes. 

"C'mon . . . made in Ukraine, forged in the West Side of Chicago. These weak New York CIty germs got nothing on me. I'm impervious." 

"Just like you were impervious to the taco stand on 3rd?" 

"Shut the fuck up." He was smiling. "Food poisoning and the flu are two very different things. On that note, I brought you lunch." 

He handed over the Styrofoam container and Evie grumbled when she took hold of it. It was still steaming hot. 

"That was positively the worst segue of topics in human history." She popped the lid off the top. It really did smell good, like the superior version of those cans of Jimmy Neutron themed Campbell's chicken noodle that were her childhood in Ohio. Except, with like, recognizable food items as ingredients. Big chunks of chicken and carrots and - 

"It's got the floating bread thingies in it." She prodded one of them sideways with a disposable chopstick.

"You wound me. Deeply. How are we still even friends. Better yet, how are you still alive in New York City?" 

"Guess I was just lucky enough to end up with friends like you." She imbued the phrase with extra sarcasm, hoping it would cover up the truth of the statement. 

"Face it, tiger. You hit the jackpot with me. The stunning looks, the J-" 

"You're quoting Mary Jane Watson right now so I'm just going to ignore you." 

"Same. Duly noted. I will just sit right here and not notice anything about you. There. You're like a brick wall." A really warm (probably too warm) brick wall that was still wrapped around him and was wearing very, very soft flannel pajamas and - 

"I'm telling you, Felix is a clone. Or like, somehow connected to all this clone shit." 

"Nah, the whole point of him is that he's an ordinary schmoe surrounded by all the clone shit." 

Evie shook her head vehemently. "No one in that family is an ordinary shmoe! That's the point. Felix being a random foster kid Miss S. picked up and not, like, a science experiment would be a really big coincidence." 

On screen, Helena killed a person. Sam whistled appreciatively. 

"Keep your theories your theories to yourself, sheba. We'll see who's right in the long run." 

"Oh, shut up, Sam Lloyd. You were the one who was going off about aliens and cybernetic implants and super soldiers like, an episode ago." 

"All valid theo-" he tried to protest, but she shut him up with her index finger against his lips. It was very distracting. 

"Shhh. Watch." She physically twisted his head to it faced the TV again, where Sarah made morally dubious phone calls and Cosima scienced. 

Like the badasses they were, they made it all the way through to the midseason finale with only minor pauses before Sam got up to hunt for popcorn. When he returned to the couch, Evie was sprawled out, his space appropriated and her eyes glazed over. She looked about a minute away from the sleep she probably really needed. 

She gave him a lazy smile. Catlike.

"You're a mess, Sam Lloyd." 

"Yeah. I know. Thanks for reminding me." 

"But I'm a mess too." 

Sam's eyebrows went up, surprised. This conversation had taken an unexpectedly philosophical turn.

"And I think our messes kind of fit together. 

Sam almost choked on a mouthful of popcorn. No way. No way the girl he'd had a massive crush on for months now could be saying that now, there, feverish and half asleep. Damn it. Maybe he he'd caught whatever she had and was having fever hallucinations as well. 

He picked up the edge on her blanket that had fallen on to the floor and tucked her in. She curled into his touch in way he tried not to overanalyze. 

"And you're high on cough syrup, Miss O'Neill." 

It didn't matter what he said. She was already out cold. 

Later on, when it was dusky outside but he was still on her couch, almost asleep himself (she'd decided, unconsciously in her sleep, to use him as a pillow), he thought about that snippet of conversation again. And tried not to over think it. 

Evie was the kind of girl who, like, frequently told her female friends that she loved them and constantly posted #wcw photos of Ling and Mabel and Theta and unironically referred to all of them as "babe." Clearly he should not have read into it at all. 

But still? 

But still, he did. He'd been gone for her for a long time. Anonymity was Sam's superpower, had always been. It was survival instinct, the scrawny child of Soviet Jewish immigrants in the West side. A boy who wasn't noticed wasn't picked on, didn't have his lunch or his bus fare taken from him. It was later that he'd seen their was a kind of power to it, to being the (admittedly far, far more handsome than most) face in the crowd. He'd built a career on being unrecognizable, unmemorable, unfindable- a literally life saving skill for an investigative journalist.

So why did he want Evie to notice him, more than anything else in the world? 

She had had plenty of guys. She had taken plenty of guys home, and chatted at length about them afterwards, even when she couldn't remember the names. (They were mainly a collection of defining details [nose ring, orange hair, enviable shoes] , weird anecdotes, and some truly terrifying tales that had had both Mabel and Sam offering their services to scare some of these dudes away. Not that Evie needed them. And not that he hadn't taken plenty of people home as well. He wasn't going to be a hypocritical asshole and admonish her for doing the exact same thing.) 

So it's not like he can blame her for anything when he's the coward who isn't brave enough tell her how he feels. And the main reason he can't tell her is that he really freaking values this. Their friendship. Their currently not-turned-wierd-and-awkward friendship, which admittedly consists mostly of bickering and arguing over conspiracy theories about shows on Netflix, but is still the best friendship he's ever had. Because damn it, O'Neill's right. Their messes do kind of fit together. 

\-----oOo------ 

"Awww, princess. You came to check up on me," Sam rasped four days later. He was lying on the faded couch he'd made Jericho and Memphis drag up to his place from the street corner it had been abandoned on. He shared an apartment with Theta and Henry, forming perhaps history's Oddest Trio, but the arrangement worked on the basis that they allow one corner of the place to be, as Theta put it, Sam-ified and the rest left completely alone. So he had his couch and the ancient dry erase board he used to investigate articles, currently almost papered over with various claims brought against Jake Marlowe and his military-industrial complex ties to the Pentagon. And in return Sam didn't utter a word against the piano or hearing Broadway show tunes at three A. M. It was a model system. 

"I came because I'm the only one who isn't out of commission. Theta and Henry are out of town on the show run, Mabel is sick at home and wants you to know you are personally responsible for the continued existence of capitalism-" 

"I am a man of many talents-" 

"Ling is sick and Memphis is sick and therefor Isaiah is sick and took it to school and therefor every other fifteen year old in New York is sick and it's ALL YOUR FAULT, SAM LLOYD!" 

He held up a mitten clad hand, because his responce to fever chills was to dress like he was headed on an Everest expedition. Floofy mittens, hat, parka, everything. What a drama queen. 

"Hold up. Why is this all my fault? You were the first one to come down with it." 

"Yeah, but I had the good sense to STAY IN MY OWN FUCKING APARTMENT! And not give it to people. Meanwhile Sam 'Am fram ChiCAgo-' " 

"That is the worst impression of my accent I've ever heard-" 

"Couldn't even acknowledge the fact that he was fucking sick! Until you literally almost passed out at work." 

"I did not pass out. I just temporarily lost control of some of my sensory processing faculties due to a combination of virus-related factors." Sam repeated, verbatim, a phrase that he had had barked down the phone at him from smarter friends. "Science!" 

He tried to smirk, which didn't really work out, because he now also resembled Rudolph. 

"Would you like me to re-introduce you to your old friend the dictionary?" 

"I think I'm alright, sugar." 

She flopped down on the other end of his couch. 

"Still don't have a tv here, do you?" 

"Laptops exist for a reason." He dug his out from the pile of backlisted newspapers and highlighted journals and started to boot up Netflix. "What shit had gone down when you fell asleep on me last time, O'Neill?" 

"Rachel reunited with her baby daddy and Helena burns the weird farm down." 

"Fucking Ukrainian icon. I'm still right about the super soldier theory, though." 

"In your dreams, Sam Lloyd." 

"Sugar, you don't even want to know what happens in my dreams." 

Her eyebrows shot up for a second and he could have sworn her cheeks blushed, just a little, but the next thing he knew she was punching him in the arm and hogging the laptop. She yanked the blanket over to her side and he shrieked at the sudden cold air. 

She smirked. "I don't think anyone does. Now shut up, Sergei, and watch." 

She was right. Their messes really did fit together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm currently doing prompts for pretty much all things Diviners, so hit me up either in the comments section or @ghostborscht!
> 
> Orphan Black was not a random choice! The Diviners and the Clone Club have a lot in common, and now I'm emotional about both.


End file.
